Tommy Lee On New Motley Crue Album “I Would Imagine We’ll Start Compiling Ideas This Summer”

Tommy Lee On New Motley Crue Album “I Would Imagine We’ll Start Compiling Ideas This Summer”

March 2, 2011

Motley Crue is teaming with fellow Los Angeles rockers Poison and early influences the New York Dolls for a summer tour to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the band’s first album. But it’s not being considered a third version of the Crue Fest series.

“It’s definitely not Crue Fest,” drummer Tommy Lee tells Gary Graff of Billboard.com. “Crue Fest is, like, five [bands], and this is just the three of us. But it’s special because it’s another Crue tour and it’s summertime, man. That’s always special.”

Lee says the band is “just starting” to talk about it stage production for the jaunt, which begins June 7 in Dallas and so far has 38 dates booked through Aug. 5 in Toma, Wisc. Repertoire decisions, including how to treat the anniversary of 1981’s platinum “Too Fast For Love,” will be made in April when Lee, Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars and Vince Neil — recently released from jail in Nevada after serving 10 days of a 15-day sentence for drunk driving — convene for rehearsals.

Meanwhile, Lee is excited about both of the groups that will be accompanying the Crue this summer. “I’m really excited about the Dolls,” he notes. “They were in that handful of early inspirations when we were all 17 and 18 years old, looking at their style and their music. So it’s cool to go on tour with them.”

As for Poison, a onetime rival on the Sunset Strip scene during the 80s, Lee says, “I never really got into all that…rivalry or feud. Just go up and bang out your tunes, dude. Who cares about anything else? I really don’t.”

As for new Crue music, Lee says the group planned to have something out this year but was waylayed by various side projects, including his Methods of Mayhem and Sixx’s new Sixx: AM album and book. But Lee, who plans to spends part of March DJ’ing and playing drums for Deadmau5 at the Winter Music Conference in Miami, hopes that being on the road will instigate some creativity within the band.

“When the four of us are together, which we will be in the summer, that’s usually when it goes down,” he says. “We record sound checks with new ideas. I always have a studio on my bus. So I would imagine we’ll start compiling ideas this summer. It’s almost like you’ve got to get away from home to start writing music.”

Lee says a home for new songs could be the film adaptation of the Crue’s 2002 memoir “The Dirt — Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band,” which is now on track with Rob Zombie as it’s director. “That would be a cool place to release some new music,” Lee notes. “It gives new reason for new music. People aren’t really buying records these days, so it seems like a good place to maybe put something new from us.”